The Dawn of Time - Part I
by darknight92
Summary: When they were little girls, best friends Dawn Harris and Amy Pond made an imaginary friend, and they join him on his adventures when he returns twelve years later. AU. Rewrite of Series 5. Doctor/OC, Rory/Amy. (A/N: Chapter 2 edited on 4-23-14)
1. The Eleventh Hour

**DOCTOR WHO**  
**The Dawn of Time  
(Part I)  
**

Summary: When they were little girls, best friends Dawn Harris and Amy Pond made an imaginary friend, and twelve years later he returns and they join him on his adventures. Rewrite of Series 5 of Doctor Who featuring my OC, Dawn Harris. Doctor/OC, Rory/Amy.

Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, the Doctor would be paired with a Time Lady and we'd see more of his past companions.

A/N: So after reading a bunch of Doctor/OC fics, I was inspired to write my own and here it is. My OC is Dawn Harris, a very special girl whose background will be explained in time. I picture her to look a bit like Amanda Seyfried. Anyway, this is my first Doctor/OC, the first fic I've posted on this site in a LONG time, so let me know what you think and if there's anything I can do to improve it, if I should use more descriptions or if there's anything I can do to fix the grammar, which I'll admit isn't my strong point.

* * *

Chapter 1: The Eleventh Hour

"Are you sure this will work?"

Amelia Pond huffed as she saw the skeptical look on her best friend's face. Dawn Harris had been living with her and her aunt for several months now, since they'd found her unconscious on the side of a road just outside Leadworth, and while Amelia liked the other girl well enough, it was sometimes a bit annoying how often she liked to question Amelia and her decisions.

"Of course I'm sure," she replied.

"But -" Dawn started to protest. In her defense, she just didn't see how praying to Santa, of all people, was going to help. The man spent most of the year sleeping at the north pole and left only once a year to deliver presents to all the good, well-behaved kids around the world. Or at least that's what Sharon had told them when they'd asked.

"It'll work," Amelia cut in. "Stop worrying so much."

It was Dawn's turn to huff, but to Amelia's relief, she complied and knelt beside her on the floor at the foot of her bed.

"I'll start," Amelia said, her tone leaving no room for argument. She closed her eyes as she began to pray. "Dear Santa, thank you for the dolls and the pencils and the fish. It's Easter now, so I hope we didn't wake you. But honest, it _is_ an emergency."

At this, the girls turned as one to look at the crack. It spread the length of Amelia's bedroom wall and emitted a strange light. Amelia turned to Dawn and nudged her. The little blonde girl rolled her eyes, but picked up the prayer.

"Her Aunt Sharon says it's an ordinary crack," she said, "but . . . we know it's not, because, at night, we can hear voices. So please, it would be great if you could send someone to fix it. Maybe a policeman. Or . . ."

But just then the two girls heard a strange warping sound coming from just outside. The warping was followed shortly by a loud crash and the sound of glass breaking. They exchanged looks.

"Back in a moment," Amelia promised Santa. She and Dawn got up, grabbed their flashlights, ran to the window, and pulled back the curtain to look outside. Smoke was rising from a blue box laying on its side where the shed used to be. Across the top in big white letters were the words 'POLICE BOX.' Amelia turned to Dawn, whose mouth had fallen open. "I _told_ you it would work."

"Thank you, Santa," Dawn breathed, eyes wide as saucers. She could hardly believe that had actually worked, but why else would there be a police box in the back yard only seconds after she'd asked for a policeman?

The two girls wasted no time in running downstairs, pausing at the door only to grab their jackets - blue for Dawn and red for Amelia - and matching boots. Flashlights in hand, they made their way to the garden, but just as they entered, the door of the box suddenly opened and out came a rope attached to a grappling hook, which latched onto a lawn mower.

Moments later, a young man with floppy brown hair and pale, greenish blue eyes appeared. He spotted the girls almost at once.

"Can I have an apple?" he asked them. "All I can think about - apples. I love apples. Maybe I'm having a craving." He sounded delighted. "That's new - never had cravings before." He hauled himself up so he was straddling the edge of the box and peered inside. "Whoa! Look at that!"

"Are you okay?" Amelia asked him.

The man put both his legs over so he was sitting on the edge and looked at the girls. "Just had a fall," he said. "All the way down there, right to the library. Hell of a climb back up."

Amelia frowned, noticing the state of him. His clothes were torn and raggedy, clinging to him. "You're soaking wet."

"I was in the swimming pool."

Dawn's brows furrowed. "You said you were in the library."

The man smiled at her, his eyes soft. "So was the swimming pool."

"Are you a policeman?"

The man was suddenly all serious, peering intently at her, scanning her in the way adults tended to do when they wanted to make sure someone wasn't hurt. "Why? Did you call a policeman?"

"Did you come about the crack in my wall?" Amelia asked.

"What cra - ?" But before the man could finish his question, his body was wracked with spasms that sent him falling to the ground. "Agh!"

Dawn's eyes widened in alarm. "Are you okay?"

The man got to his knees. "No, I'm fine, it's okay," he assured her. "This is all perfectly norm -"

A strange wisp of golden light escaped him when he opened his mouth.

"Are you _sure_?" Dawn pressed.

The man nodded. "Like I said, it's perfectly normal."

Dawn fixed him with a dubious look. "If you say so . . ."

"Who are you?" Amelia asked.

The man's hands were glowing with that same gold light. "I don't know yet," he said. "I'm still cooking." He looked at Dawn. "Does it scare you?"

"No, it just looks a bit weird," she said.

"No, no, no. The crack in her wall. Does it scare you?"

"Yes."

"And you?" The man directed the question at Amelia this time, but almost as an afterthought. When she nodded, he jumped to his feet and looked down at them. "Well, then, no time to lose. I'm the Doctor. Do everything I tell you, don't ask stupid questions, and don't wander off."

And with that, the man strode away with purpose only to walk headfirst into a tree, knocking him to the ground.

"I thought you said you were alright," Dawn said, frowning, a bit concerned about the stranger and wondering if she should call an ambulence.

"I am," the man said. "It's just the early days. Steering's a bit off."

Once the man got to his feet, the girls led the way back into the house and left the Doctor in the kitchen while they divested themselves of their jackets and boots. When they returned, they found him still standing in the doorway, looking around, and Amelia went to fetch him an apple.

"If you're a doctor, why does your box say 'Police'?" she asked once she'd gotten one and held it out to him.

The Doctor didn't reply. Instead, he took the apple, bit into it, and then started chewing only to spit it out, coughing. "That's disgusting. What is that?"

"It's an apple," Dawn said.

"Apples are rubbish. I hate apples."

Amelia frowned. "You said you loved them."

"No, no, I love yogurt. Yogurt's my favorite. Give me yogurt."

Amelia dashed over to the fridge to get him one, but after the Doctor opened it and poured some into his mouth, he spat that out too.

"I hate yogurt," he ammended. "It's just stuff with bits in it."

Amelia narrowed her eyes at him. "You said it was your favorite."

"New mouth, new rules." The Doctor wiped his hand across his mouth to get rid of his yogurt mustache. "It's like eating after cleaning your teeth, everything tastes wro - agh!"

The Doctor had another small fit.

"What is it?" Amelia asked. "What's wrong with you?"

"Wrong with me?" the Doctor demanded, looking a bit insulted. "It's not my fault. Why can't you give me decent food? You're Scottish - fry something."

While Amelia got the stove working, Dawn turned to the Doctor. "Would you like a towel?"

The Doctor nodded. "A towel would be lovely, thank you."

Dawn blinked, a bit bemused at how he went from rude to polite in less than a minute, but went to fetch him a towel.

"Thanks," he said when she returned, and set to work drying himself off.

"Your welcome."

"Ah!" The Doctor had noticed what Amelia was frying. "Bacon!"

A few minutes later, he sat down at the table and Amelia put the plate of bacon in front of him. She and Dawn watched, laughing a bit, as he took one of the strips and shoved it into his mouth. Dawn giggled, but Amelia looked a bit cross, when he spat it back out a moment later.

"Bacon," he said. "_That's_ bacon." He leaned across the table and eyed Amelia with a look of deepest suspicion. "Are you trying to poison me?"

Amelia tried baked beans next. Dawn made a face as she watched, but the Doctor looked pleased. "Ah, you see," he said, "beans."

When the beans were finished, the Doctor sat back down at the table and Amelia placed a plate of them in front of him. He took a forkful, but didn't even chew before he spat them back out.

"Beans are evil," he declared. "Bad, bad beans."

Dawn nodded solemnly in agreement.

Amelia decided to try something a little more simple next. She got out a loaf of bread and butter, and spread some of the butter over one of the slices.

"Bread and butter," the Doctor said. "Now you're talking."

But when he took a bite, he didn't just spit it out this time, he took the entire plate, went over to the door, and threw it out. Dawn winced a bit when she heard a crash and the sound of a cat shrieking in the distance.

"And stay out!" the Doctor shouted before he closed the door. He began to pace restlessly.

Amelia went over to the fridge and looked inside. "We've got some carrots."

"Carrots?" The Doctor stopped dead and turned to face her. "Are you insane? No, wait, hang on. I know what I need. I need . . . I need . . . I need . . ." He looked in the freezer and the fridge and procured - "Fish fingers . . . and custard."

Later, the three of them sat at the table, the Doctor across from the girls, dipping fish fingers into his custard. Dawn and Amelia had decided that, since they were up, they might as well eat something, too, so Amelia had gotten out some ice cream and they were both eating out of the container. They watched as the Doctor picked up the bowl of custard and drank from it, which left a mustache when he finally set it down, and he wiped that away with his hand.

"You're funny," Dawn remarked.

"Am I?" the Doctor asked. "Good. Funny's good. What's your name?"

"Dawn Harris."

"Ah, that's a brilliant name. Are we in America, Dawn?"

"No, we're in England."

"My parents and I had to move here," Amelia said. "It's rubbish."

"What's your name, then?" the Doctor asked.

"Amelia Pond."

"Another brilliant name. Amelia Pond, like a name in a fairy tale. So what about your mum and dad, then? Are they upstairs? Thought we'd have woken them by now."

"She doesn't have a mum and dad," Dawn told him. "Just an aunt."

"I don't even have an aunt."

"Neither does Dawn," Amelia said. "You're both lucky."

"I know. So, your aunt. Where is she?"

"She's out," Dawn informed him. Sharon was always going out and always returned late the next morning.

The Doctor gaped a bit. "And she left you both all alone?"

"We're not _scared_!"

"'Course you're not. Neither of you are scared of anything! Box falls out of the sky, man falls out of box, man eats fish custard, and look at the two of you, just sitting there. So you know what I think?"

Dawn and Amelia spoke in unison. "What?"

"Must be a hell of a scary crack in your wall."

Once they had all finished eating, Dawn helped Amelia put everything away, then they led the Doctor upstairs to Amelia's room. He went over to the crack and started examining it, poking and prodding it with his fingers.

"You've had some cowboys in here," he remarked. "Not actual cowboys, though that can happen."

"I used to hate apples," Amelia said, standing in the doorway with Dawn, clutching the apple she'd offered to the Doctor earlier in her hand, "so my mum put faces on them."

Amelia handed the apple to the Doctor, showing him the smiley face she'd carved into it.

"She sounds good, your mum," the Doctor said. He tossed the apple into the air, caught it, and pocketed it. "I'll keep it for later." He turned his attention back to the wall. "This wall is solid and the crack doesn't go all the way through it. So here's a thing - where's the draft coming from?" He took out a silver screwdriver with a blue tip and pointed it at the crack, seeming to scan it. "Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey. You know what the crack is?"

"What?" Dawn asked.

"It's a crack," he informed her, running his fingers along the length of it. "I'll tell you something funny. If you knocked this wall down, the crack would stay put, 'cos the crack isn't in the wall."

"Where is it, then?" Amelia asked.

"Everywhere. In everything. It's a split in the skin of the world. Two parts of space and time that should never have touched, pressed together . . . right here in the wall of your bedroom." The Doctor pressed his ear against the wall. "Sometimes, can you both hear . . ."

"A voice? Yes."

The Doctor darted over to the bedside table and picked up a glass of water. He flung the water out, although judging by his expression, he hadn't quite meant to do that. Still, he took it over and put it against the wall, pressing his ear against the one end.

"Prisoner Zero?" he murmured.

"Prizoner Zero has escaped," Amelia recited.

"That's what we heard," Dawn said. "What does it mean?"

The Doctor stepped away from the wall. "It means that, on the other side of this wall, there's a prison and they've lost a prisoner. Do you know what that means?"

"What?" Amelia asked.

"You need a better wall." The Doctor moved her desk away from the wall. "The only way to close the breach is to open it all the way. The forces will invert and it'll snap itself shut. Or . . ."

"Or what?" Dawn asked.

He turned to her. "You know when grown-ups tell you everything's going to be fine and you think they're probably lying to make you feel better?"

"Yes."

"Everything's going to be fine."

The Doctor held his hand out to Dawn, who took it hesitantly, and then Amelia stepped forward to grab the sleeve of Dawn's shirt. With his free hand, the Doctor pointed his screwdriver at the crack in the wall. Dawn peered around his arm and watched as the crack widened, and squinted through the blinding light shining through it, trying to see what was inside, which turned out to be the bars of what looked to be prison cells.

A booming voice sounded from the crack: "Prisoner Zero has escaped."

The Doctor took a step closer to the crack.

"Prisoner Zero has escaped," the voice repeated.

"Hello?" the Doctor called. "Hello?"

A giant blue eye appeared in the crack, peering at them.

"What's that?" Dawn asked.

A small ball of light shot out of the crack, striking the Doctor and knocking him into the bed. And then the crack slammed shut.

"There," the Doctor said. "You see, told you it would close. Good as new."

"What was that thing?" Amelia asked. "Was that Prisoner Zero?"

"If that was Prisoner Zero, why would it tell us it escaped?" Dawn asked.

"She's right," the Doctor said. "I think that was Prisoner Zero's guard. Whatever it was, it sent me a message." He held up a blank piece of paper. "Psychic paper, takes a lovely little message. 'Prisoner Zero has escaped.' But why tell us? Unless . . ."

He stood abruptly. Dawn could immediately sense something was wrong. "Unless what?" she asked, dreading his answer.

"Unless Prisoner Zero escaped through here," he said. "But he couldn't have. We'd know."

Dawn and Amelia followed as he ran into the hall, looking around.

"It's difficult," he said to them. "Brand-new me, nothing works yet. But there's something I'm missing . . . in the corner . . ." He turned to the other end of the hall. ". . . of my eye." Suddenly, a bell went off, and he bolted down the stairs. "No, no, no, no, no, no!"

Dawn and Amelia were hot on his heels. They followed him all the way out to the garden.

"I've got to get back in there!" he said. "The engines are phasing, it's going to burn!"

"But . . . it's just a box!" Amelia protested. "How can a box have engines?"

The Doctor freed the grappling hook and started gathering up the rope. "It's not a box," he said. "It's a time machine."

"A time machine?" Dawn repeated, eyes wide in disbelief. "Really?"

"Yes, but not for much longer if I can't get her stabilized. Five-minute hop into the future should do it."

"Can we come?" Amelia asked as he looped the rope around the door handles.

"Not safe in here, not yet. Five minutes. Give me five minutes, I'll be right back."

The Doctor hopped onto the edge of the box and prepared to jump inside.

Dawn bowed her head and looked away. "People always say that."

Amelia, also not looking at him, nodded in agreement.

The Doctor jumped to the ground and looked them both in the face. "Am I people?" he asked, his tone gentle. "Do I even look like people? Trust me, I'm the Doctor."

Dawn and Amelia smiled at that, but watched a bit sadly as he climbed back onto his box and gave them one last look before jumping inside.

"Geronimo!" they heard him shout.

With that, the doors slammed shut and they watched as the box started to disappear. As soon as it was gone, they dashed back inside, went to their respective rooms, and packed up all their things. Amelia went downstairs first, but just as Dawn made to follow, she froze and looked around, starting to feel a bit uneasy. Not seeing anything out of place, however, she took one last look around before heading downstairs and joining Amelia in the garden.

For a long time, far longer than five minutes, they sat there on their suitcases looking up at the stars.

They stayed there for so long that they both ended up falling asleep.

* * *

Twelve years passed, and life went on for Dawn Harris and Amelia Pond. Over time, Amelia would shorten her name to Amy and eventually her aunt moved out, leaving the house to the girls.

Although they had never stopped thinking about the strange Doctor who'd paid them a visit all those years ago, Dawn and Amy had come to accept what their psychiatrists told them time and time again, that he wasn't real, and so it came as quite a shock when, one morning when they were upstairs minding their own business, a man that looked just like him came running up the stairs, shouting that they needed to get out of the house.

They saw him pause at the door and, thinking quickly, Dawn fetched a cricket back from her room and whacked him with it just as he turned around to face them. The man slumped to the floor, unconscious, and the girls wasted no time in cuffing him to the radiator.

Dawn looked at Amy. "Policewomen?"

Amy nodded. "Policewomen."

By the time the man woke up, they were both dressed in matching outfits with short skirts and holding fake radios.

"White male, mid-20s, breaking and entering," Amy said into hers, covering up her Scotting accent with a British one. "Send us some back-up, we've got him restrained. Oi, you! Sit still."

The man groaned. "Cricket bat. I'm getting cricket bat."

"You were breaking and entering," Dawn, also using a British accent, said, narrowing her eyes at him.

The man tried to stand up, but he couldn't get very far and finally noticed the handcuffs.

"Well, that's much better," he remarked sarcastically. "Brand-new me, whack on the head. Just what it needed."

"Do you want to shut up now?" Amy cut in. "We've got back up on the way!"

"Hang on, no, wait - you're policewomen."

"And you're breaking and entering," Dawn said. "You see how this works?"

"But what are you doing here? Where're Dawn and Amelia?"

"Dawn Harris and Amelia Pond?" Amy asked.

"Yeah. Little American and Scottish girls. Where are they? I promised them five minutes but the engines were phasing. I suppose I must have gone a bit far. Has something happened to them?"

Dawn and Amy tried to keep their expressions composed as they exchanged a look.

"Dawn Harris and Amelia Pond haven't lived here in a long time," Dawn said finally, turning back to the stranger.

"How long?" he demanded.

"Six months," Amy lied smoothly.

"No, no, no! I can't be six months late! I said five minutes. I _promised_."

The man gave a sniff, as if he was about to cry, but Dawn and Amelia turned from him, completely unsympathetic. If he _was_ the Doctor, and neither was entirely sure he was, then he deserved to suffer a bit.

"What happened to them?" the Doctor, _if_ that was who he really was, asked them. "What happened to Dawn Harris and Amelia Pond?"

This time it was Dawn who spoke into her fake radio. "Sarge, it's us again. Hurry it up, this guy knows something about Dawn Harris and Amelia Pond."

"I need to speak to whoever lives in this house now," the Doctor said.

"We live here," Amy said.

"But you're the police."

"Yes, and this is where we live," Dawn said. "Got a problem with that?!"

"How many rooms?" the Doctor cut in.

Dawn blinked, a bit taken aback by the unexpected question. "What?"

"On this floor. How many rooms on this floor? Count them for me now, both of you."

"Why?" Amy demanded.

"Because it will change your life."

Amy rolled her eyes. "Five," she said.

Dawn began to count, pointing at each of the doors in the hall in turn. "One, two, three, four, five -" She was about to keep counting, but she caught herself. However, the Doctor noticed her slip and he latched onto it at once.

"Six," he finished for her.

Dawn tried to scoff. "Six?"

The Doctor nodded at the extra door. "Look."

"Look where?"

"Exactly where you don't want to look. Where neither of you ever want to look, the corners of your eyes. Look behind you."

Dawn and Amy turned slowly on the spot. Dawn swallowed when she finally saw the door. She always got a horrible feeling in her gut whenever she was anywhere near that sector of the hall for prolonged amounts of time. It used to be that she couldn't stand to be anywhere near it for more than five seconds and she grew anxious whenever she was in the rooms on either side of it, and even after all these years she tended to skirt her way around it.

"That's . . . That is not possible," Amy tried to deny. "How's that possible?"

"There's a perception filter round the door," the Doctor said. "Sensed it the last time I was here. Should've seen it."

"But that's a whole room. That's a whole room we've never even noticed."

Both girls had known something wasn't quite right about that particular sector of the wall where the door now stood, but there had never been anything there.

"The filter stops you," the Doctor said. "Something came a while ago to hide. It's still hiding. You need to uncuff me now!"

Amy slowly started to approach the door while Dawn hung back. "I don't have the key," she whispered. "I lost it."

"You lost the key?" Dawn hissed.

"How can you have lost it?!" the Doctor shouted. "Stay away from that door!"

But of course Amy didn't listen.

"Do not touch that door!"

Amy put her hand on the doornob.

"Listen to me! Do not open that . . ."

But Amy had already turned the nob.

"Why does no one ever listen to me?" The Doctor looked at Dawn. "Do I just have a face that nobody listens to . . . again?"

"Yes," Dawn told him bluntly, nodding, never taking her eyes off the door as Amy hesitantly entered.

"My screwdriver," the Doctor said. Dawn could hear him searching through his pockets. "Where is it? Silver thing, blue at the end. Where did it go?"

Dawn shrugged. "I didn't see it."

"There's nothing here," Amy called from inside the room.

"Whatever's there stopped you seeing the whole room," the Doctor informed her. "What makes you think you could see it? Now, please, just get out!"

"Silver, blue at the end?"

"My screwdriver, yeah."

"It's here."

"It's must have rolled under the door," Dawn said.

"Yeah."

Dawn frowned. Amy sounded a bit odd - her voice was a little higher than normal and the lightness in her tone was almost . . . forced.

"Must have," Amy went on. "And then it must have jumped up on the table . . ."

Dawn stiffened. That meant there really was something in there!

"Get out of there!" the Doctor shouted. "Get out! Get out of there!"

But Amy still didn't listen.

"What is it? What are you doing?"

"There's nothing here," Amy said, "but . . ."

"Corner of your eye."

"What is it?"

"Don't try to see it," the Doctor warned. "If it knows you've seen it, it will kill you. Don't look at it. Do not . . . look . . ."

Amy screamed.

"Get out!" Dawn shouted. When Amy came running into the hall, screwdriver in hand, she scanned her over for injuries. "You alright?"

Amy nodded. "Yeah," she breathed. "It didn't get me."

"What didn't get you?"

"Give me that!" the Doctor said, snatching the screwdriver away and pointing it at the door, locking it. He tried to use it on the handcuffs, too, but it didn't work. "What's the bad alien done to you?"

"Will that door hold it?" Amy asked.

"Oh, yeah, yeah, course!" the Doctor said sarcastically. "It's an inter-dimensional multi-form from outer-space - they're all terrified of wood."

A bright light flashed around the edges of the door.

"What's that?" Dawn asked. "What's it doing?"

The Doctor started rubbing at the slime covering the screwdriver. "I don't know," he said, "getting dressed? Run. Just go. Your back-up's coming. I'll be fine."

"There is no back-up," Amy admitted.

The Doctor looked up, surprised. "I heard you both on the radio, you called for back-up."

"We were pretending," Dawn said. "They're pretend radios."

"You're policewomen."

"We're _kissograms_!"

Dawn and Amy removed their hats, letting their hair, black and ginger respectively, fall down to their shoulders. Just then, the extra door fell into the hallway, revealing an old man and a large rottweiler.

The man stepped into the hall.

"But it's just . . ." Amy trailed off.

Dawn shook her head. "No, I don't think it is."

"She's right," the Doctor agreed. "Look at the faces."

The man growled and barked like a dog while the actual dog remained silent.

"What?" Amy said. "I'm sorry, but what?"

She looked to the Doctor. She still didn't want to believe he was who he looked and sounded like, but he seemed to know what was going on.

"It's all one creature," he explained. "One creature disguised as two. Clever old multi-form. A bit of a rush job, though. Got the voice a bit muddled, did you?"

The creature, who had been looking left and right, looked straight at the Doctor.

"Mind you," he continued, "where did you get the pattern from? You need a psychic link, a live feed. How did you fix that?"

The creature only snarled in response and began to advance on the Doctor, Dawn, and Amy.

"Stay, boy!" the Doctor commanded, and it froze. "These two and me, we're safe. Want to know why? They sent for back-up."

"We didn't send for back-up!" Dawn and Amy hissed.

"I know, that was a clever lie to save our lives," he said to them, then he turned back to the creature. "Okay, yeah, NO back-up! And that's why we're safe. Alone, we're not a threat to you. If we HAD back-up, then you'd have to kill us!"

_"Attention, Prisoner Zero. The human residence is surrounded. Attention Prisoner Zero. The human residence is surrounded."_

It was the booming voice Dawn and Amy hadn't heard in twelve years, but Amy must have forgotten, because she turned to the Doctor. "What's that?"

"That would be back-up," he said. "Okay, one more time. We _do_ have back-up and that's definitely why we're safe."

_"Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated."_

"Well, safe apart from, you know, incineration."

The creature went into one of the other rooms in the hall. As the voice repeated its warning, the Doctor banged his screwdriver on the floor.

"Work, work, work," he pleaded urgently. "C'mon."

At last, the screwdriver turned on and he used it to uncuff himself.

"Run," he said to Dawn and Amy. He got to his feet - "Run!" he repeated - and ushered them down the stairs. Once they were outside, he turned to the door and flashed it with his sonic screwdriver before he turned to the girls. "Kissograms?"

"Yes!" Amy said defensively.

"Why'd you pretend to be policewomen?"

"You broke into our house," Dawn said. "It was this or French maids!"

"What's going on?" Amy demanded as the two girls kept pace with the Doctor. "Tell us! Tell us!"

They made their way into the back garden where the police box from all those years ago now stood.

"An alien convict is hiding in your spare room disguised as a man and a dog," the Doctor said, "and some other aliens are about to incinerate your house. Any questions?"

"Yes," the girls said.

"Me too." The Doctor tried to unlock the doors to the box, but the key didn't work. "No, no, don't do that, not now! It's still rebuilding, not letting us in!"

_"Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incincerated."_

"Yes, yes, we _know_!" Dawn snapped impatiently, then she noticed the creature standing at one of the windows and grabbed the Doctor's arm. "Come on."

But the Doctor resisted. "No, wait, hang on, wait, wait, wait," he said. "The shed." He ran over to the garden shed. "I destroyed that shed last time I was here, smashed it to pieces."

"So there's a new one," Amy said. "Let's go."

"But the new one's got old. It's ten years old at least."

The Doctor sniffed the wood before running his finger along the edge and tasting it.

"Twelve years," he ammended. "I'm not six months late, I'm twelve years late."

He stalked over to the girls, eyeing them, finally seeing the similarities between them and the little girls from so long ago.

"He's coming,"Amy said, trying to distract him.

"You said six months," he said. "Why did you say six months."

"We've got to go," Dawn urged, trying to pull him away, but again he resisted.

"This matters," he said. "This is important. Why did you say six months?"

"Why did you say five minutes?!" Dawn and Amy shouted, neither able to maintain their British accents through their hurt, revealing the American and Scottish ones underneath.

The Doctor looked stunned. "What?"

"Oh, just come _on_ already!" Dawn said, grabbing him and dragging him behind her, nodding for Amy to take his other arm.

"What?" the Doctor repeated.

"Come on!" Amy shouted, helping Dawn pull him away.

_"What?!"_

_"Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incincerated."_

Once they reached the main street, the Doctor pulled away from the girls, started walking on his own, then stopped to face them. "You're Dawn and Amelia."

"You're late," Amy muttered, stalking down the street after Dawn.

"Dawn Harris and Amelia Pond, you're the little girls."

"I'm Dawn," Dawn snapped, "and she's Amelia -"

"- and you're late," Amy finished.

"What happened?"

"Twelve years."

"One of you hit me with a cricket bat."

"Twelve _years_."

"A cricket bat."

"Twelve years and _four_ psychiatrists."

"Four?"

"Six for me," Dawn interjected.

_"Six?"_

". . . We kept biting them. Well, I kicked a few of them, too . . ."

The Doctor looked at them. "Why?"

Both girls slowed down a bit and looked at him.

"They said you weren't real," Amy said quietly.

_"Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incincerated."_

Where earlier it had just been a disembodied voice, this time it was coming from an ice cream van.

"We're being staked out by an ice-cream van?" Dawn asked, incredulous. She and Amy followed the Doctor over to it.

"What's that?" the Doctor asked the vendor. "Why are you playing that?"

"It's supposed to be Claire De Lune," the man said.

The Doctor picked up the radio and listened.

_"Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated. Repeat, Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incincerated."_

Dawn looked around, frowning when she heard the warning coming from all sorts of odd places. Among these were a jogger's MP3 player and a woman's cell phone.

"Doctor, what's happening?" she asked.

The Doctor didn't answer. Instead, he leapt over a low fence into someone's front garden, leaving Dawn and Amy little choice but to follow.

"Hello!" the Doctor said as they burst into the house. "Sorry to burst in, we're doing a special on television faults in this area." He glanced at Dawn and Amy's costumes. "Also, crimes. Let's have a look."

He took a remote control from an elderly woman. Dawn recognized her vaguely as her friend Jeff's grandmother.

"I was just about to phone," the woman said. "It's on every channel." She spotted the girls standing to the side. "Hello, Amy, dear. And Dawn, how lovely to see you again. Are you policewomen now?"

"Well, sometimes," Amy hedged.

"I thought _you_ were a nurse."

Amy started looking a bit uncomfortable. "I can be a nurse."

"Or, actually, a nun."

Amy was definitely squirming now. "I dabble."

"Amy, Dawn, who is your friend?"

"Who's Amy?" the Doctor asked suddenly. "You were Amelia."

"Yeah, now I'm Amy."

"Amelia Pond - that was a great name."

"Bit fairytale."

"And you!" The Doctor pointed at Dawn, who blinked, a bit startled at being addressed.

What had she done?

"You were blonde last I saw you and now your hair's black!"

"So I dyed my hair," she said defensively. "What of it?"

"But it looked fine! Why did you change it?"

"I got bored one day and thought 'what the hell.'"

"I know you," Jeff's grandmother piped up, looking at the Doctor, "don't I? I've seen you somewhere before."

"Not me. Brand-new face . . ." The Doctor twisted his features a bit as if to emphasize this. "First time on." He looked at Dawn and Amy. "And what sort of job's a kissogram?"

"We go to parties and we kiss people," Amy said. She cleared her throat, uncomfortable admitting this in front of Jeff's grandmother. "With outfits. It's a laugh."

The Doctor's eyes flashed angrily. "You were little girls five minutes ago!"

"You're worse than her aunt!" Dawn said. No need to mention that she'd tried time and time again to get Amy to reconsider - the girl did have a boyfriend, after all, and she knew it hurt poor Rory to see Amy flirting with all those other boys. Although if he wasn't in the picture, there wouldn't be any problem, at least not that she could see. It wasn't as if they were children anymore - they could do whatever they wanted. She could admit it might not be one of the best jobs, and it didn't always pay very well, but they still had a good bit of money left behind from Amy's parents and a fund Sharon had actually set up for them, so it wasn't as if they were struggling to get by. Maybe in a few more years they would move on to something a little more serious, but for now . . .

"I'm the Doctor, I'm worse than everybody's aunt." There was a pause as the Doctor look at Jeff's grandmother. "And that is _not_ how I'm introducing myself."

The Doctor picked up a radio that was sitting around and flashed it with his sonic screwdriver. They could hear the message about Prisoner Zero in French and German before it turned off.

"Okay, so it's everywhere, in every language," the Doctor said. "They're broadcasting to the whole world."

He opened a window and looked up.

"What's up there?" Amy asked. "What are you looking for?"

The Doctor pulled his head back inside. "Okay, planet this size, two poles, your basic molten core . . . They're going to need a forty percent fission blast."

Just then, Jeff came into the house and the Doctor walked up to him.

"But they'll have to power it up first," he went on, "won't they? So assuming a medium-sized starship, that's twenty minutes." He raised himself up on tiptoe trying to get level with Jeff, but only managed to reach the younger man's shoulders and backed down. "What do you think, twenty minutes? Yeah, twenty minutes. We've got twenty minutes?"

"Twenty minutes to what?" Dawn asked. "Incineration?"

Jeff stared at the Doctor. "Are you the Doctor?"

"He is, isn't he?" Jeff's grandmother realized, sounding thrilled. "He's the Doctor! The Raggedy Doctor. All those cartoons you girls did when you were little. The Raggedy Doctor, it's him."

"I know," Amy said softly.

The Doctor looked over at her and Dawn, bemused, as he sat down on the couch. "Cartoons?"

"Gran, it's him, isn't it? It's really him!"

"Shut up, Jeff," Dawn said. She turned to the Doctor. "Well? Am I right?"

"The human residence," he said. "They're not talking about your house, they're talking about the planet. Somewhere up there, there's a spaceship and it's going to incincerate the planet. Twenty minutes to the end of the world."

And with that said, the Doctor hopped to his feet and ran out of the house. Dawn and Amy didn't want to deal with Jeff and his grandmother, not to mention all the questions they must have, so they were quick to follow.

"What is this place?" the Doctor asked as the trio passed by a boy playing with a toy helicopter running down the road in the opposite direction. "Where am I?"

"Leadworth," Dawn replied.

"Where's the rest of it?"

"This is it," Amy told him.

"Is there an airport?"

Dawn repressed a snort. "No."

"A nuclear power station."

"No," Amy said.

"Even a little one?"

"'Fraid not," Dawn said.

"Nearest city?"

"Gloucester," Amy said, "half an hour by car."

"We don't have half an hour. Do we have a car?"

"No," Dawn said. "Mine's at the shop."

"Well, that's good! Fantastic, that is. Twenty minutes to save the world and I've got a post office. And it's shut! WHAT is that?"

"It's a duck pond," Amy told him, as she and Dawn ran over to join him.

"I always thought that was odd, though," Dawn remarked. "I mean, there's never any ducks."

"And that's exactly my point," the Doctor said. "So how do you know it's a duck pond?"

"It just is," Amy said. "Is it important, the duck pond?"

But just then, the Doctor's body was wracked by a tremor. "I don't know," he said. "Why would I know?" He sat heavily on the ground, clutching his chest. "I'm not ready, I'm not done yet."

The sky suddenly went dark and they all looked up.

"What's happening?" Amy asked. "Why's it going dark?"

"Force field?" Dawn guessed, watching as the sun turned gray for a moment before it flickered and went back to normal.

The Doctor nodded. "They've sealed off your upper atmosphere, now they're getting ready to boil the planet." He stood and looked around to where the villagers were all standing around, taking pictures of the sun. "Oh, and here they come, the human race. The end comes, as it was always going to - down a video phone!"

"This isn't real, is it?" Amy asked suddenly, turning to him. "This is some kind of big wind-up."

"Why would I wind either of you up?"

"You told us you had a time machine."

"And you both believed me."

"Then we grew up."

The Doctor groaned. "Oh, you never want to do that. No, hang on, shut up, wait! I missed it." He smacked himself on the forehead. "I saw it and I missed it." He smacked himself again. "What did I see? I saw . . . What did I see?" After a moment, he looked at Dawn and Amy. "Twenty minutes. I can do it. Twenty minutes, the planet burns. Run to your loved ones and say goodbye, or stay and help me."

Amy looked as if she were going to consider this for a moment, but then she steeled herself and fixed the Doctor with a hard look. "No."

"I'm sorry?"

"No!" Amy repeated, grabbing him by the tie and dragging him off.

"Amy, let him go, he's telling the truth!" Dawn shouted, rushing after them. She could understand why her friend was acting this way - really, she could - but from the sounds of it, they didn't have a lot of time to spare.

"Amy!" the Doctor protested. "No! No! What are you doing?"

Amy pushed the Doctor against a car just as the driver was stepping out, slammed the door on the Doctor's tie, snatched the remote from the driver and locked the car.

"Are you out of your mind?" the Doctor demanded.

"Who are you?" Amy asked him.

"You know who I am."

"No, really, who are you?"

"Look at the sky! End of the world, twenty minutes."

"Better talk quickly, then!"

"Amy, let the Doctor go and give the poor man back his car!"

"I am going to need it back," the driver agreed, nodding.

"Yes, in a bit," Amy said, never taking her eyes off the Doctor. "Now go and have a coffee."

"Right, yes," the driver sighed, and shuffled off.

The Doctor reached into one of his pockets and procured an apple. Dawn could see that someone had taken a bite out of it and that a smiley face had been carved into it - it was the same apple Amy had given the Doctor to eat.

"Catch," he said, tossing it to Amy, who turned it over to look at the face. "I'm the Doctor. I'm a time traveller. Everything I told you and Dawn twelve years ago is true. I'm real. What's happening in the sky is real, and if you don't let me go now, everything you've ever known is over."

Unfortunately, Amy was stubborn as ever.

"I don't believe you," she insisted.

The Doctor gripped her wrist. "Just twenty minutes," he implored. "Just believe me for twenty minutes. Look at it. Fresh as the day you gave it to me. And you know it's the same one."

Amy looked down at the apple, then back at the Doctor.

"Amy, just believe him," Dawn said imploringly. "It's only twenty minutes."

Amy slowly raised the remote and pressed the button to unlock it. "What do we do?"

"Stop that nurse!" the Doctor said, and wound his way through the people who had gathered over to a young man dressed in blue scrubs. It was Rory. The Doctor ran right up to him and snatched away his phone. "The sun's going out, and you're photographing a man and a dog. Why?"

Rory didn't answer. He'd just spotted the girls running up behind the Doctor. "Amy? Dawn?"

"Hi!" Amy said brightly. "Oh, this is Rory, he's a . . . friend."

"Boyfriend," Rory corrected.

"Kind of boyfriend," Amy hedged.

"Amy!"

"Not _kind of_," Dawn said. _"Is."_

"Man and dog, why?" the Doctor demanded, growing impatient.

Rory's eyes widened when he finally got a better look at the Doctor. "Oh, my God, it's him."

"Just answer his question, please," Amy said.

"It's him, though. The Doctor. The Raggedy Doctor."

"Yeah, he came back."

"But he was a story. He was a game."

The Doctor's patience had worn thin. He grabbed Rory by the shirt and shook him a bit. "Man and dog - why? Tell me now."

"Sorry. Because he can't be there. Because he's . . ."

"In a hospital," the Doctor said in unison with him, "in a coma."

Rory nodded. "Yeah."

"Knew it. Multi-form, you see?" The Doctor released Rory. "Disguise itself as anything, but it needs a live feed, a psychic link with a living but dormant mind."

"Er, like that one?" Dawn asked, spotting the creature standing nearby.

"Yes, exactly like that one," the Doctor said, walking towards it, completely unfazed by all its snapping and snarling. "Prisoner Zero."

"What, there's a Prisoner Zero too?" Rory asked.

"Yes," Dawn said.

An electrical buzz sounded from above and they all looked up to see a spaceship flying overhead. The giant eye attatched to it swiveled about, scanning everything in sight.

The Doctor procured his screwdriver. "See, that ship up there is scanning this area for non-terrestrial technology. And nothing says non-terrestrial like a sonic screwdriver."

He held it high above his head and set it off. There was chaos all around as street lights shattered, car alarms went off, sirens wailed, and everyone began shouting. A fire truck even drove by on its own, chased by some firemen.

"I think someone's going to notice, don't you?"

Things seemed to be going well as Prisoner Zero barked. The Doctor lowered his screwdriver, aiming it at a neaby phone box, which exploded, but then the screwdriver itself sparked and fizzled, causing the Doctor to drop it.

"No, no, no," he said, "don't do that!"

Without the screwdriver to set things off, the spaceship didn't spot anything out of the ordinary and started to leave.

"Look, it's going," Rory said.

"No, come back, he's here!" the Doctor shouted after it, waving his arms about as if that would help catch their attention. "Come back! He's here, Prisoner Zero is here. Come back, he's here! Prisoner Zero is . . ."

He trailed off, seeming to realize it was no good, and Prisoner Zero took the opportunity to turn into mist and escape down the drain he stood over.

"Doctor!" Amy said. "The drain. It just sort of melted and went down the drain."

"Well, you didn't expect it to stick around, did you?" Dawn asked. She didn't wait for an answer. "It's an escaped convict and we're trying to send it back to prison, of course it escaped."

"Alright, so what do we do now?"

"It's hiding in human form," the Doctor said. "We need to drive it into the open. No TARDIS, no screwdriver, seventeen minutes. Come on, think. Think!"

They all moved to stand around the drain.

"So that thing," Amy said, "_that_ hid in our house for twelve years?"

"Multi-forms can live for millenia," the Doctor said. "Twelve years is a pit-stop."

"So how come you show up again on the same day that lot do? The same minute?"

"They're looking for him, but followed me. They saw me through the crack, got a fix. They're only late cos I am."

"What's he on about?" Rory asked.

"Now, sport, give me your phone."

"How can he be real? He was never real."

"Phone, now, give me!"

Rory absently handed over the phone. "He was just a game. We were kids. You two made me dress up as him."

Dawn peered over the Doctor's shoulder, watching as he scrolled through the photos Rory had taken. "Those are all coma patients?"

"Yeah."

"No, they're all multi-form," the Doctor corrected. "Eight comas, eight disguises for Prisoner Zero."

"He had a dog, though," Amy had to point out. "There's a dog in a coma?"

"The coma patient dreams he's walking a dog, Prisoner Zero gets a dog. Laptop! Your friend, what was his name? Not him, the good-looking one."

"Thanks," Rory said.

"Are you talking about Jeff?" Dawn asked. "He's not that good-looking . . ."

"You just think he's too pretty for your tastes," Amy dismissed.

"Oh, thanks," Rory said, looking a bit hurt that Amy hadn't disagreed with the Doctor. Dawn offered him a sympathetic smile. It was a shame, really, that Amy couldn't see what was right under her nose.

"He had a laptop in his bag," the Doctor said, "a laptop. Big bag, big laptop, I need Jeff's laptop. You two, get to the hospital, get everyone out, clear the whole floor. Dawn, you're with me. Phone us when you're done."

And with that, he ran off, pulling Dawn after him. They ran all the way back to Jeff's house and, like before, burst in without knocking. They found Jeff's bedroom quick enough to find the man himself laying on his bed, looking at something on his laptop.

"Hello," the Doctor greeted. "Laptop, give me!"

He made a grab for it, but Jeff refused to let it go. "No, no, no, no, wait, hang on!" he said, clearly trying to exit some of the screens.

"It's fine, give it here." The Doctor snatched away the laptop and sat on the edge of the bed. His eyes went wide. "Blimey!"

Dawn sat down next to him and made a sound of disgust. "Honestly! Get a girlfriend, Jeff."

Jeff was already quite embarrassed, and his grandmother entering the room only made it worse for him.

"Gran," he groaned, looking as if he wanted the floor to swallow him up.

"What are you doing?" the woman asked.

"The sun's gone wibbly," the Doctor informed her, typing very fast on the keyboard, "so right now, somewhere out there, there's going to be a big video conference call. All the experts in the world panicking at once, and do you know what they need? Me." A bunch of different screens popped up, each of them showing a different person. "Ah, and here they all are. All the big boys. NASA, Jodrell Bank, Tokyo Space Centre, Patrick Moore."

"Ooh, I like Patrick Moore," Jeff's grandmother said.

"I'll get you his number, but watch him, he's a devil."

"You can't just hack in on a call like that," Jeff protested.

"Apparently he can," Dawn said.

The Doctor held up a blank piece of paper to the webcam.

"Who are you?" asked one of the experts. "This is a secure call. What are you doing?"

"Hello," the Doctor said. "I know, you should switch me off. But before you do, watch this."

Once more he started typing very fast.

"It's here too," said another expert, "I'm getting it."

"Fermat's Theorom," the Doctor said, "the proof, and I mean the real one, never seen before. Poor old Fermat, got killed in a duel before he could write it down. My fault, I slept in. Oh, and here's an oldie but a goodie - why electrons have mass. And a personal favorite of mine, faster-than-light travel with two diagrams and a joke. Look at your screens. Whoever I am, I'm a genius. Look at the sun. You need all the help you can get. Fellas, pay attention."

He pulled out Rory's phone and started typing something on it.

"Sir, what are you doing?"

"I'm writing a computer virus. Very clever, super-fast, and a tiny bit alive, but don't let on. Why am I writing it on a phone? Never mind, you'll find out. Okay, I'm sending this to all your computers. Get everyone who works for you sending this everywhere. Email, text, Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, radar dish - whatever you've got. Any questions?"

"Who is your lady friend?" Patrick Moore asked, peering at Dawn.

"Patrick, behave!" the Doctor scolded.

"What does this virus do?" one of the experts asked.

"It's a reset command, that's all. It resets counters, it gets in the wifi and resets every counter it can find. Clocks, calendars, anything with a chip will default at zero at exactly the same time. But, yeah, I could be lying, why should you trust me? I'll let my best man explain."

There was silence for a long moment.

Dawn leaned around the Doctor. "Jeff," she whispered, "I think you're his best man."

Jeff looked shocked. "His what?"

The Doctor closed the laptop partway so that none of the experts could see them. "Listen to me," he said to Jeff. "In ten minutes, you're going to be a legend. In ten minutes, everyone on that screen is going to be offering you any job you want. But first, you have to be magnificent. You have to make them trust you and get them working. This is it, Jeff. Right here, right now. This is when you fly. Today's the day you save the world."

"Why me? Why not Dawn?"

"I need her, and it's your bedroom. Now go, go, go."

"You should probably delete your internet history!" Dawn called over her shoulder as the Doctor dragged her off again.

Once they were outside, the Doctor paused for a moment before he caught sight of the fire truck from earlier. He looked at Dawn. "What do you think?"

She shrugged. "Why not?"

That was how they found themselves driving down the road in the fire truck, the Doctor at the wheel, his driving making Dawn regret not putting her foot down when they debated which of them would drive. She clutched the edges of her seat tightly with both her hands, until Rory's phone went off, forcing her to free one of them so that she could answer.

"Yeah?"

Amy's voice came over the line. "Dawn, we're at the hospital," she said, "but we can't get through."

"Look in a mirror." They were still dressed as policewomen. That should be enough to get them anywhere while people were still panicking.

"Oh!"

"What did she say?" Rory asked.

"Look in the mirror. Ha-ha! Uniform! Are you on your way? You're going to need a car."

"We've got one," Dawn assured her. "The Doctor commandeered us a vehicle."

At that moment, the Doctor set off the siren.

Amy hung up only to phone again a few minutes later.

"Are you in?" Dawn asked her.

"Yep. But so's Prisoner Zero."

Dawn looked at the Doctor. "She says Prisoner Zero's at the hospital."

"Hand me the phone," he said, and took it from her when she held it out to him. "You need to get out of there."

"What's happening?" Dawn asked.

"Amy? Amy, what's happening? Amy, talk to me!"

"She's not hurt, is she?"

The Doctor shook his head. "Which window are you? Which window?" He tossed the phone to Dawn. "Text them. Tell them to duck."

Dawn sent the text as they pulled into the hospital. The Doctor raised the ladder on the top of the truck and there was the sound of glass breaking. He didn't even wait for the shards to stop falling, climbing on top of the truck and scaling up to the window, but Dawn was more cautious, and he was waiting to help her into a hospital ward when she reached the top.

"Right!" the Doctor said, turning to face a woman and two little girls. Amy had said Prisoner Zero was at the hospital, which meant that the trio was the prisoner in disguise, something the wary looks Amy and Rory were shooting it seemed to confirm. "Hello! Are we late? No, three minutes to go. So still time."

"Time for what, Time Lord?" Prisoner Zero asked.

"Take the disguise off. They'll find you in a heartbeat. Nobody dies."

"The Atraxi will kill me this time. If I am to die, let there be fire."

"Okay. You come to this world by opening a crack in space and time. Do it again - just leave."

"I did not open the crack."

"Somebody did."

"The cracks in the skin of the universe - don't you know where they came from? You don't, do you?" Prisoner Zero switched from the woman's voice to the voice of one of the little girls. "The Doctor in the TARDIS doesn't know. _Doesn't know, doesn't know!_" Zero reverted to the woman's voice. "The universe is cracked. The Pandorica will open. Silence will fall."

There was a clicking noise. Dawn looked at the clock to see that it now read 0:00.

"And we're off!" the Doctor said. "Look at that." He pointed at the clock. "Look at that! Yeah, I know, just a clock, whatever. But do you know what's happening right now? In one little bedroom, my team are working. Jeff and the world. And do you know what they're doing? They're spreading the word all over the world, quantum fast. The word is out. And do you know what the word is? The word is zero. Now, me, if I was up in the sky in a battleship, monitoring all Earth communications, I'd take that as a hint. And if I had a whole battle fleet surrounding the planet, I'd be able to track a simple old computer virus to its source in, what, under a minute?" He took Rory's phone from one of his pockets. "The source, by the way, is right here."

A bright light shone through the windows.

"Oh! And I think they just found us!"

"The Atraxi are limited," Prisoner Zero said, surprisingly calm. "While I'm in this form, they'll still be unable to detect me. They've tracked a phone, not me."

"Yeah, but this is the good bit. I mean, this is my favorite bit. Do you know what this phone is full of?"

"Pictures of you," Dawn cut in. "Of all the forms you've taken."

"Oh, and being uploaded about now," the Doctor said. "And the final score is - no TARDIS, no screwdriver - two minutes to spare." He held out his arms, triumphant. "Who da man?"

The was silence throughout the ward.

"_Never_ say that again," Dawn told him after a moment.

"Oh, I won't! Fine."

"Then I shall take a new form," Prisoner Zero said.

"Oh, stop it, you know you can't. Takes months to form that kind of psychic link."

"And I've had years."

Prisoner Zero's form began to glow. Amy collapsed on the spot and Dawn and the Doctor rushed over to her.

"No! Amy?" The Doctor put his hands on Amy's face. "You've got to hold on. Amy! Don't sleep! You've got to stay away, please."

Dawn looked up at Prisoner Zero only to see that it had turned into the Doctor. "Er, Doctor?"

He looked up. "Well, that's rubbish," he remarked. "Who's that supposed to be?"

"That's you."

"Me? Is that what I look like?"

Dawn blinked in surprise. "You mean you don't know?"

"Busy day." The Doctor stood. "Why me, though?" He looked at Prisoner Zero. "You're linked with her. Why are you copying me?"

"I'm not," Prisoner Zero said, using Amy's tone of voice from when she was a child, and a younger Amy stepped out from behind the Doctor. "Poor Amy Pond and Dawn Harris." This time it was a younger Dawn that spoke as she moved to stand on the Doctor's other side. "Still such children inside." Zero reverted to Amy, "Amelia, dreaming of the magic Doctor she knows will come and save them," and back to Dawn, "What a disappointment you've been."

"No," the Doctor disagreed. "She's dreaming about me cos she can hear me." He turned back to Amy. "Amy, don't just hear me, listen. Remember the room, the room in your house you couldn't see? Remember you went inside. I tried to stop you, but you did. You went into the room. You went inside. Amy . . . dream about what you saw."

"No . . . no . . . no!" Prisoner Zero's eyes went wide and it began to transform once more, this time into an eel-like creature covered in the slime that had been all over the screwdriver. It bared its long, sharp teeth at them.

"Well done, Prisoner Zero," the Doctor said, turning to face it again. "A perfect impersonation of yourself."

Prisoner Zero hissed and writhed angrily as it was caught in a light.

_"Prisoner Zero is located. Prisoner Zero is restrained."_

"Silence, Doctor," Prisoner Zero said. "Silence will fall."

And with that warning, Prisoner Zero disappeared. There was a whoosh of air outside as the Atraxi ships flew away. The Doctor ran to the window and looked out, then started dialing a number on Rory's phone.

"The sun - it's back to normal, right?" Rory asked. "That's . . . That's good, yeah? That means it's over."

Amy chose that moment to wake up.

"Amy? Are you okay? Are you with us?"

"What happened?" Amy asked.

"He did it. The Doctor did it."

"No, I didn't," the Doctor said.

"What are you doing?" Dawn asked him.

"Tracing the signal back." He looked at Rory. "Sorry, in advance."

Rory shook his head, confused. "About what?"

"I'd imagine it's not cheap calling an alien," Dawn said.

The Doctor nodded and Rory winced as he envisioned the bill.

"Oi, I didn't say you could go!" the Doctor said into the phone. "Article fifty-seven of the Shadow Proclamation. This is a fully established, level five planet, and you were going to burn it? What . . . ? Did you think no one was watching? You lot, back here. Now!" He tossed the phone back to Rory. "Okay. Now I've done it."

The Doctor left the ward, Dawn and Amy hot on his heels, not wanting to miss any of the action.

"Did he just bring them back?" Rory demanded. "Did he just save the world from aliens and then bring all the aliens back again?"

"Where are you going?" Amy asked the Doctor as Rory caught up to them.

"The roof," the Doctor replied. "No, hang on."

He entered a room full of clothes and began to sift through the racks, tossing a few things aside as he did so.

"What's in here?" Amy asked.

"I'm saving the world - I need a decent shirt. To hell with the raggedy. Time to put on a show!"

"You just summoned aliens back to Earth," Rory said as the Doctor began to strip. "Actual aliens, deadly aliens, aliens of death, and now you're taking your clothes off . . . Amy, he's taking his clothes off."

Amy just kept watching the Doctor appreciatively, ignoring the look Dawn shot her for it.

"Turn your back if it embarrasses you," the Doctor said.

"Are you stealing clothes now?" Rory asked him. "Those clothes belong to people, you know." He turned his back, then seemed to realize that neither Dawn nor Amy were turning theirs. "Are you not going to turn your backs?"

Amy crossed her arms and kept her eyes trained on the Doctor. "Nope."

Dawn forced her to turn around, earning a grateful look from Rory and causing Amy to pout, and turned back to enjoy the show, smirking when the Doctor blushed under her own appreciative stare.

Once the Doctor was dressed in a pale pink long-sleeved shirt and trousers with braces on them, he gathered up a bunch of different ties and draped them around his neck before leading the way up to the roof. Dawn, Amy, and Rory hung back while he strode up to the Atraxi ship.

"So this was a good idea, was it?" Amy called after him. "They were leaving."

"Leaving is good," the Doctor replied. "Never coming back is better. Come on, then! The Doctor will see you now."

The giant eye disconnected from the ship and scanned him.

"You are not of this world," the Atraxi concluded.

"No," the Doctor confirmed, "but I've put a lot of work into it." He examined one of the ties. "I don't know. What do you think?"

"Is this world important?"

"Important?" The Doctor seemed to almost laugh at that, clearly thinking the question absurd. "What's that mean, important?" He tossed the tie over his shoulder and Rory caught it before it fell to the ground. "Six billion people live here - is that important? Here's a better question. Is this world a threat to the Atraxi?" He tossed another tie over his shoulder - this time it landed on Amy's shoulder and she handed it to Rory. "Well, come on. You're monitoring the whole planet. IS this world a threat?"

The Atraxi projected a circular hologram depicting bits of the Earth and its history. "No."

"Are the people of this world guilty of any crime by the laws of the Atraxi?"

More images, this time showing more of the historical events. "No."

"Okay. One more. Just one. Is this world protected? Because you're not the first lot to come here."

As the Doctor spoke, the projection began to show a number of strange creatures.

"Oh, there have been so many!" the Doctor went on. "And what you've got to ask is . . . what happened to them?"

The projection now switched to images of various men, the last three accompanied by three different women. When it got to the last image, the Doctor stepped through the projection.

"Hello," he said. "I'm the Doctor." He said something else that Dawn and the others couldn't quite make out. "Basically . . . run!"

The Atraxi couldn't seem to get away fast enough. Dawn and Amy laughed, thrilled that he'd saved them all. But then the Doctor took off, grabbing Dawn by the wrist as he passed her, and they left Amy and Rory behind.

"Where are we going?" Dawn asked him as they ran out of the hospital and through the streets.

"Back to the TARDIS!" he said. "It's ready."

"How do you know?"

"My key is connected to the TARDIS. It started to burn when it was finished."

"What about Amy?"

"Oh, don't worry, I won't forget about her. We'll be back."

"If you're coming back, why are you taking me now?"

"I thought you of all people would want to get out of Leadworth as soon as possible!"

"What's that supposed to mean?!"

The Doctor just laughed in response.

* * *

A/N: Yes, I know that isn't the end of the episode, but that's where I decided to end it. Anyway, let me know what you think and, again, I'd appreciate it if anyone has any pointers so I can make it better. I'll try to get the next chapter up by the end of next week. I'd update sooner, but I have more OCs than Dawn in my head screaming for me to write them and I want to try and get them sorted out even if most of their stories won't end up on this site. The next chapter, by the way, will be the Meanwhile in the TARDIS minisode AND The Beast Below. Also, if you have any questions about Dawn and her story, I'll do my best to answer, but there isn't much I can say without giving too much away, although I'm sure you can guess a bit of what's to come.


	2. The Beast Below

**DOCTOR WHO**  
**The Dawn of Time**  
**(Part I)**

Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who, although Dawn is mine.

A/N: Sorry this is so late. I meant to have it up on Thursday, but real life got in the way and then I decided to rewrite the mini-sode. It was originally in Dawn's perspective like most of this story will be, but I changed it so it's from Amy's now instead and the Beast Below goes back to Dawn.

* * *

Chapter 2: The Beast Below

* * *

_(Meanwhile in the TARDIS)_

* * *

Amy was standing in the middle of the console room in her nightgown, staring around in awe and wonder. Dawn, still in the police outfit with the miniskirt, was standing by the doors, a similar expression on her face, while the Doctor puttered around the console, giving the girls a moment to adjust. The ginger hadn't been at all happy when they'd left her behind after the confrontation with the Atraxi, and she'd spent two years thinking they were off having adventures without her, but then they'd come back in the same clothes they'd been wearing before and Dawn hadn't aged even a day. She'd learned they'd gone on one adventure, one brief trip to the moon to break in the TARDIS - they'd stayed for ten minutes, and it was the Doctor's bad piloting that brought them back two years later.

Two years ago, she had been hurt and so, _so_ angry when she and Rory had ran back to her house just in time to see the blue box dematerialize. Hurt that she'd been left behind and angry because Dawn, her best friend in the whole world, had abandoned her. Or so she'd thought until they came back for her.

Of course, when she'd heard the box materializing, she'd marched right out to the garden and started shouting at Dawn the moment she saw her. She'd ranted and raved for a good minute before the other girl had slapped a hand over her mouth to silence her and quickly explained what had really happened or _hadn't_ happened. Amy had forgiven her then, realizing that it wasn't her fault, and hugged her tightly, apologizing for all the terrible things she'd thought and said about her, and then the Doctor had stepped out of the box to see what was taking so long and she'd given him a good slap.

She thought it was justified and well deserved - after all, she'd spent the past two years thinking the very worst of her friend all because, on a whim, he'd decided to take her along on his very first trip in his new and improved TARDIS and hadn't given a thought to Amy in his excitement.

"Yes, I probably deserved that," the Doctor had admitted, and then he'd asked her to run away with him - well, him and Dawn - and now here they all were.

It was almost too good to be true, and almost like a dream with how the TARDIS was bigger on the inside. . . .

"So what's so important about tomorrow morning?" Dawn asked.

Amy jumped and tried not to look guilty. She knew Dawn was just curious, but she also knew that her friend would be quite angry with her if she learned the truth about why Amy had asked the Doctor to return her to that particular time should she ever decide she'd had enough adventure.

"Oh, nothing," she lied and quickly turned to the Doctor before Dawn had a chance to pry, hoping for a distraction and blurting out the first question that came to her mind. "Why's it a phone box?"

Dawn shook her head, but thankfully let the matter rest for the moment as she turned to the Doctor. "Yes, why is that?" she asked. "Is it some sort of camouflage thing? You don't want people to know it's a time machine, so you make it look like something else?"

"Sorry what?" The Doctor paused in the middle of whatever he was doing and looked at them.

"On the outside it said police box," Amy said. "Why have you labeled a time machine 'police box'? Is it like Dawn said, some sort of camouflage? But then why a police box? What _is_ a police box anyway? Do policemen come in boxes? How many do you get? Are you a policeman?" She shook her head as the Doctor looked at her. "No, look at your hair. Actually just LOOK at your _hair_! Do you ever look at your hair and think 'woah, it just won't stop? And my chin!'" She put her hands to her own chin, feeling it. "'Look, I'm wearing a bowtie, shoot me now'?"

"Amy," Dawn cut in, amused, "you're gabbing."

"Am I?"

"A bit, yeah," the Doctor agreed.

"The question stands."

"The first question?"

"Yes."

"Well, like you guessed, Dawn, it _is_ camouflage," the Doctor confirmed, maneuvering around Amy as he continued to work at the console, "a disguise to make it look like a police box, which by the way is a special kind of telephone box that police men used to use."

"Right, telephone box. There's a light on the top, do you need to change the bulb?"

"Amy, stop. Breath . . ."

Amy took a deep breath and struggled for a moment _not_ to say something else, but in the end she couldn't help it. "_Why_ doesn't the air get out? It is made of wood? Oh . . . you've got a wooden time machine. Do you feel stupid? Sorry, back on the bow tie."

"Like I said it's camouflage," the Doctor explained as Dawn moved to join them by the console. "It's disguised as a police telephone box from 1963. Every time the TARDIS materializes in a new location within the first _nanosecond_ of landing it analyzes its surroundings, calculates a 12-dimensional data map of everything within a thousand mile radius and determines which outer shell would blend in best with the environment . . ."

Amy and Dawn started to smile at that . . .

". . . and then it disguises itself as a police telephone box from 1963."

. . . and then they both frowned.

"Why?" Dawn asked. "Did you break it?"

"No," the Doctor said, sounding a bit defensive. "It's just a bit of a fault. I've been meaning to check. . . ."

"So it's a police box _every_ time?"

"Yeah, I suppose, now you mention . . ."

"How long's it been doing that?" Amy asked.

"Oh . . . not long . . ."

"Okay, okay, but what about the windows?" Amy looked around at all the circular windows around the room before turning back to the Doctor. "There are windows on the outside but where do they go?" Her eyes were suddenly drawn back to the bow tie. "Is it a cry for help?"

"What?" the Doctor asked.

"She's talking about your bow tie," Dawn told him.

"Bow ties are cool," he defended.

"And you're an alien," Amy breathed as she looked at him.

"Yeah! Well, in your terms yeah, in MY terms," the Doctor tapped her on the forehead, "YOU'RE an alien. In quite a few people's terms probably."

"What kind of alien?" Dawn asked.

Something odd flashed across the Doctor's eyes at that, some unreadable emotion, as he looked at Dawn, but it was only for a second and then it was gone, and Amy blinked, frowning, wondering if she might have imagined it.

"Well, you know, a nice one," he said, looking down at the console, and Amy couldn't shake the feeling that he was avoiding Dawn's gaze. "Definitely one of the nice ones."

Shaking herself from her thoughts - she was probably just imagining things - Amy poked him on the shoulder, testing him. "So you're like a, uh, space . . . squid? Or something? Are you like a tiny little slug in a human suit?"

The Doctor rolled his eyes at that as he began to move around the console.

"Is that why you walk like that?" Amy pressed, following him.

"Amy!" the Doctor said, turning to look at her. "This is me. This," he went on as he put her hands on his cheeks, "is what I really look like."

"Well that's fine then!" Amy slapped his cheeks.

"Ow! Good."

"Okay." Amy took another breath. "Okay, I think I'm done there . . ." She laughed.

"Amy Pond, Dawn Harris," the Doctor smiled as he pulled a lever, "we've barely started." He pulled another lever. "Cos . . ." He grabbed Dawn as he ran past her on his way to the doors, Amy at his heels. "Do you know what I keep in here?"

"What?" the girls asked as he stopped, releasing Dawn as he turned to face them.

"Absolutely everything," he said, opening the doors and they could only stare as they saw that they were floating in space. "Anything fit your fancy?"

Amy and Dawn slowly stepped forward, looking out, eyes wide, and then Amy, starting to feel a bit overwhelmed, spun to face the Doctor. "We're in space . . ."

"No," he said, nodding out the doors, "THAT's space."

"But it can't be."

"But it is."

"But it's like, it's like, it's like . . ." Amy looked out the doors and then back at him. "Special effects?"

"Like _what_?" the Doctor laughed.

"It is, isn't it? It's not real."

The Doctor nodded at the doors. "Get out."

Amy frowned. "What?"

"No, seriously." The Doctor pushed her out the doors - "Get out!" - and rushed forward to grab her by the ankle. He tried to push Dawn out, too, but she clung to the TARDIS, laughing and shaking her head. "Oh, come on, I won't let you go anywhere."

"Alright, alright, fine," she conceded, and a moment later she was floating in space next to Amy.

* * *

_(The Beast Below)_

* * *

"Come on, Pond," the Doctor said finally. He pulled her back inside, then Dawn, who stumbled a bit once she was back on solid ground, and he reached out to steady her. "There you go." He looked at Amy. "NOW do you believe me?"

"Okay, your box is a spaceship," Amy said, smiling. "It's really, _really_ a spaceship. We are in space! Woo! What are we breathing?"

"I've extended the air shell - we're fine."

"What's that?" Dawn asked. She had gotten down on her hands and knees and was leaning out the doors, looking down at a spaceship. There was what looked like a city on top of it inside a glass dome and the Union Flag was painted onto the side of it.

The Doctor knelt down beside her. "Now _that's_ interesting," he remarked. "Twenty-ninth century. Solar flares roast the Earth and the entire human race packs its bags and moves out till the weather improves."

As the Doctor, who had moved back over to the console sometime during his explanation, spoke, Amy suddenly fell out of the box as she leaned forward for a better look and knocked Dawn out in the process. They ended up clinging to the roof and the siding respectively.

"Whole nations," the Doctor went on, oblivious.

"Doctor?" Amy called.

". . . migrating to the stars."

"Doctor?" Dawn tried.

"Isn't that amazing?"

"Doctor!" both girls shouted.

He looked up from the console to see that they weren't there and came over to the doors. "Well, come on," he said, "I've found us a spaceship." He pulled the girls back inside, closed the doors, and led them back over to the console, where he pulled a few levers and brought up a monitor to show them the inside of the spaceship. "This is the United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland - all of it, bolted together and floating in the sky. Starship UK. It's Britain, but metal. That's not just a ship - that's an idea. That's a whole country, living and laughing and . . . shopping." Dawn and Amy chuckled at that. "Searching the stars for a new home."

"Can we go out and see?" Amy asked.

"Course we can but first, there's a thing," the Doctor warned her.

"A thing?" Dawn asked.

"An important thing. In fact, thing one -" He looked at the girls through a magnifying glass, "we are observers only. That's the one rule I've always stuck to in my travels. I never get involved in the affairs of other peoples or planets. Ooh!" His attention was drawn back to the monitor, which was now showing an image of a little girl in a red sweater, sitting alone and crying, and the people around her were just walking right by her, either not noticing or not caring. "That's interesting."

"So we're like a wildlife documentary, yeah?" Dawn heard Amy say as the Doctor grabbed her by the hand and pulled her out of the TARDIS. She looked around at all the stalls and booths as he dragged her right over to the little girl, who ran away. While Dawn spun slowly in a circle, looking at everything, the Doctor, realizing that Amy hadn't followed them, looked over at the TARDIS, grinning, and waved for her to come outside and join them.

Dawn ran over to Amy as the ginger emerged from the TARDIS, looking around in wonder. "Can you believe it?"

"I know," Amy said. "We're in the future. Like hundreds . . . of years in the future. We've been dead for centuries."

"Oh, lovely," the Doctor remarked as he came over to join them. "You're a cheery one." He took them both by the arms and they started walking along the marketplace. "Never mind dead, look at this place, isn't it _wrong_?"

"What's wrong?"

"Well, we're on a spaceship," Dawn said, pausing for a moment to bounce up and down on the ground, testing it. "Shouldn't there be vibrations or something, you know, from the engines?"

"Yes, but that's not all," the Doctor said. "Use your eyes, notice everything. What else is wrong with this picture?"

"Is it . . . the bicycles?" Amy guessed, pointing to one and jumping aside as it passed by them. "Bit unusual on a spaceship, bicycles."

"Says the girl in the nightie."

"Oh, my God!" Amy gasped. "I'm in my nightie."

"Dawn?" the Doctor asked, concerned, as Dawn stopped suddenly and looked down, hearing a distant sound, like something crying - no, screaming - coming from somewhere below. It was a terrible sound, pained and suffering, and made her hearts clench and her skin crawl just listening to it.

"Do you hear that?" she asked him.

"Hear what?" Amy asked while the Doctor paused to listen, frowning.

"Now, come on, look around you," he said, not answering as he put an arm around Dawn and continued walking. "Actually _look_."

"Hear what?" Amy insisted, but Dawn just shook her head, taking a deep breath to calm herself.

_"London Market is a crime-free zone,"_ said a voice over the speakers.

"Life on a giant starship, back to basics," the Doctor sighed, giving Dawn's shoulders a comforting squeeze. "Bicycles, washing lines, wind-up street lamps. But look closer. Secrets and shadows, lives led in fear. Society bent out of shape, on the brink of collapse. A police state. Excuse me."

He ran over to a table and took a glass of water from one of the people sitting there. He set it gently on the ground and looked at it intently. Dawn frowned, seeing that the water was very still, confirming that there were, in fact, no vibrations, which was definitely odd, especially considering the size of the ship. After a moment, the Doctor set the glass back on the table.

"Sorry," he said. "Checking all the water in this area. There's an escaped fish." He tapped the side of his nose and rejoined the girls. "Where was I?"

"An escaped fish?" Dawn had to ask.

"What's wrong with that?"

Dawn just shook her head. "Oh, nothing . . ."

"Why did you just do that with the water?" Amy asked.

"Remember what I said about vibrations?" Dawn reminded her.

"Oh! But what does that have to do with anything?"

"Don't know," the Doctor told her. "I think a lot. It's hard to keep track. No, police state - do you see it yet?"

"Where?"

The Doctor snapped his fingers and pointed over at a bench where the little girl from before was sitting by herself, still crying, ignored by passersby, who were all going about their business as if nothing was wrong. "There."

They walked over to another bench facing the little girl and sat down, watching her.

"One little girl crying," Amy said. She shook her head, confused. "So?"

"Crying _silently_," the Doctor corrected. "I mean, children cry cos they want attention, cos they're hurt or afraid. When they cry silently, it's cos they just can't stop. Any parent knows that."

"Are you a parent?"

The Doctor looked startled by the question, but didn't answer. "Dawn?"

"Er . . . All these parents are walking past here," she said, "but none of them are asking her what's wrong, so . . . they already know?"

The Doctor nodded. "And it's something they don't talk about. Secrets. They're not helping her, so it's something they're afraid of. Shadows - whatever they're afraid of - it's nowhere to be seen, which means its everywhere. Police state."

The little girl got up as a lift bell rang and walked off. Dawn frowned as she saw the head of a smiling figure in a booth turn to watch her go.

"Where'd she go?" Amy asked.

"Deck 207, Apple Sesame block, dwelling 54A," the Doctor told her. "You're looking for Mandy Tanner. Oh, this fell out of her pocket when I accidentally bumped into her." He handed Amy a wallet that he took from one of his pockets. "Took me four goes. Ask her about those things - the smiling fellows in the booths. They're everywhere."

"But they're just things."

"They're too clean," Dawn said. The booths were practically spotless compared to everything else.

"Exactly," the Doctor agreed. "Everything else here is battered and filthy - look at this place. But no one's laid a finger on those booths. Not a footprint within two feet of them. Ask Mandy, 'Why are people scared of the things in the booths?'"

"No," Amy protested. "Hang on - what do I do? I don't know what I'm doing here and I'm not even dressed!"

"It's this or Leadworth. What do you think? Let's see. What will Amy Pond choose?"

Amy sighed, relenting.

"Ha-ha, gotcha!" the Doctor cheered.

"And me?" Dawn asked him. "What should I do?"

"You are coming with me," he said, checking his watch. "Pond, meet us back here in half an hour."

"What are we going to do?"

The Doctor just grinned. "What do you think? Stay out of trouble. Badly."

As he spoke, he stood and leapt over the bench. He barely waited for Dawn to walk around it before taking her hand and walking off.

"So is this how it works, Doctor?" Amy called after them. "You never interfere in the affairs of other peoples or planets, unless there's children crying?"

"Yes," he replied.

* * *

Dawn climbed down a ladder into a maintenance corridor. When she reached the bottom, she turned to face the Doctor only to find him already checking the wall, pressing his hands against it and leaning in to listen.

"Can't be," he murmured.

"There's really no engine?" Dawn asked, blinking back sudden tears as she heard that horrible sound from before. Away from all the people at the marketplace, she could hear it more clearly, and it broke her hearts. She almost wanted to ask the Doctor what it was, but was afraid of the answer.

The Doctor shook his head. "But there has to be."

Dawn looked around, then tapped the Doctor's shoulder to get his attention when she spotted a lone glass of water sitting on the floor. The Doctor laid down and stared at it as if willing the water to move, but it remained quite still.

"The impossible truth in a glass of water," a woman wearing a hooded red cloak and a white mask whispered as she stepped into their line of vision. "Not many people see it." The Doctor stood. "But you do, don't you, Doctor? And you, Dawn?"

"How do you know us?" the Doctor asked.

"Keep your voice down! They're everywhere. Tell me what you see in the glass."

"Who says we see anything?"

"Don't waste time. At the marketplace, you placed a glass of water on the floor, looked at it, then came straight here to the engine room. Why?"

"No engine vibration on deck. Ship this size, engine this big, you'd feel it. The water would move. So . . . I thought we'd take a look." The Doctor opened a power box on the wall, showing the woman the wires just hanging there." It doesn't make sense. These power couplings, they're not connected. Look. Look - they're dummies, see?" He crossed the hall and rapped on the wall. "And behind this wall, nothing. It's hollow. If I didn't know better, I'd say there was . . ."

"No engine at all."

"But it's _working_. This ship is travelling through space. We saw it."

"The impossible truth, Doctor. We're travelling among the stars in a spaceship that could never fly."

"How?"

"I don't know," the woman sighed. "There's a darkness at the heart of this nation. It threatens every one of us. Help us, Doctor. You and Dawn are our only hope. Your friend is safe." She handed him a small device. "This will take you to her. Now go, quickly!"

"Who are you?" the Doctor called after the woman as she turned and walked away. "How do we find you again?"

She paused, turning to face them. "I am Liz 10. And _I_ will find _you_."

There was a crashing sound and the lights flickered. Dawn and the Doctor looked around and when they turned back, the woman was gone.

* * *

Dawn and the Doctor ran through the ship, following the device the woman had given to the Doctor, until they ran around a corner and saw Mandy pacing outside a door that said 'occupied.' The Doctor used his sonic screwdriver to force the door to open and they ran in only to see Amy standing in front of a screen. On it, a recording of the girl showed that she was crying, in the middle of relaying a message. Amy quickly turned off the screens, but not before they heard her recording telling Amy to find them.

"Amy? What have you done?" the Doctor asked her.

But Amy looked utterly perplexed. "I . . . I don't know," she admitted, looking away from the screens.

The Doctor started sonicing the screens, the lone chair before them, and the lamp hanging above them.

"Yeah, your basic memory wipe job," he said as he finished. "Must have erased about twenty minutes."

He hopped off the chair.

Amy frowned. "But why would I choose to forget?"

"Cos everyone does," Mandy piped up, standing in the doorway. "Everyone chooses the 'forget' button."

"Did you?" the Doctor asked her.

Dawn shot him a look for that. "How could she? I mean, she's just a kid."

Mandy nodded. "I'm twelve. Any time after you're sixteen, you're allowed to see the film and make your choice. And then, once every five years . . ."

"And once every five years, everyone chooses to forget what they've learned," the Doctor said. "Democracy in action."

"How do you not know about this? Are you Scottish too?"

"Oh, I'm way worse than Scottish. I can't even see the movie. Won't play for me."

"It played for me," Amy said.

"The difference being the computer doesn't accept me as human."

"Why not?"

"He said he was an alien, remember?" Dawn said.

Amy eyed the Doctor. "You look human."

"No, you look Time Lord," he countered. "We came first."

"So there are other Time Lords, yeah?"

"No." The Doctor sighed. "Well, yes, but only one and . . . It's complicated. Just us now, though. Long story. There was a bad day. Bad stuff happened, and you know what? I'd love to forget it all, every last bit of it, but I don't. Not ever. Cos this is what I do - every time, every day, every second." He started to smile. "This. Hold tight. We're bringing down the government."

He pounded the 'protest' button with his fist. The door slammed shut, leaving Mandy outside as the Smiler in the booth turned its head to reveal a very angry face. The Doctor pulled Dawn and Amy into a corner of the room as the floor slid open.

"Say 'Wheee!'" he shouted.

Dawn and Amy screamed as they fell down a chute.

They landed in a pile of rubbish and a sticky, foul-smelling liquid. The Doctor immediately got to his feet and started scanning everything with his screwdriver. Dawn stood carefully, trying not to slip and covering her nose, hardly able to bear the stench. She started to look around, but froze almost at once when her gaze landed on something long and white - well, more like a lot of somethings that were all long and white and sharp at the ends - and her mouth fell open in horror. Was _this_ what kept making that awful noise?!

"You have _got_ to be kidding me," she breathed.

"High-speed air cannon," the Doctor remarked, not hearing her. "Lousy way to travel."

"Where are we?" Amy asked as she struggled to her feet.

"600 feet down, 20 miles laterally - puts us at the heart of the ship. I'd say . . . Lancashire. What's this, then - a cave? Can't be a cave. Looks like a cave."

"This is _so_ not a cave," Dawn said.

"It's a rubbish dump," Amy said, "and it's minging!"

"Yes," the Doctor agreed, "but only _food_ refuse." He sniffed the air. "Organic, coming through feeder tubes from all over the ship."

Amy got down on her hands and knees and started feeling around. "The floor's all squidgy, like a water bed."

"But feeding what, though?"

Dawn gave a nervous laugh. "I think I have an idea," she said faintly.

The Doctor looked over at her. "What? What is it?"

"It's sort of rubbery," Amy went on, not paying much attention to either of them, "feel it. Wet and slimy."

There was a distant moaning and the Doctor straightened up, at last realizing where they were. "Er . . . It's not a floor, it's a . . ." He put away his screwdriver. "So . . ."

"It's a what?" Amy asked, getting back to her feet.

"The next word is kind of a scary word," the Doctor said to her. "Take a moment. Get yourself in a calm place." He went over to her and took her hands in his own. "Go 'omm.'"

Amy humored him. "Omm."

"It's a tongue!" Dawn burst out. They were _in a mouth_! They'd just been fed to a giant beast and they were all going to be _digested_!

"A tongue?"

"A tongue!" the Doctor confirmed, sounding excited. "A great big tongue!"

"This is a mouth?" Amy demanded, stunned by the revelation. "This whole place is a mouth? We're in a mouth?!"

"Yes, yes, yes, but on the plus side, roomy."

"How do we get out?"

The Doctor took his screwdriver back out. "How big is this beastie? It's gorgeous! Blimey! If this is just the mouth, I'd love to see the stomach."

There was a distant grunting.

"I think you might get your wish," Dawn remarked, sounding far more calm than she felt, although there was an edge of hysteria to her tone.

"I didn't mean right now," the Doctor said.

"Doctor, how do we get out?" Amy asked.

"Okay, it's being fed through surgically implanted feeder tubes, so the normal entrance is . . ."

"Closed for business," Dawn finished for him as he finally noticed the giant teeth.

"We can try, though," Amy said, taking a determined step forward.

"No!" Dawn shouted, alarmed. If they all kept moving around, then - then - well, she didn't want to think about it.

"Stop, don't move!" the Doctor warned, but then the mouth started to shake. "Too late. It's started."

"What has?" Amy asked.

"Swallow reflex."

They all slipped and fell back into the refuse, Dawn holding her breath and preparing to brace herself while the Doctor frantically used the screwdriver on the mouth walls.

"What are you doing?" Amy called.

"I'm vibrating the chemo-receptors."

"Chemo-what?"

"The eject button."

"How does a mouth have an eject button?"

"Think about it!"

The creature growled then, but just as they all managed to get on their knees, a wave of bile rushed towards them. Dawn made a faint sound of dismay.

"Right, then," the Doctor said, tweaking his bowtie. "This isn't going to be big on dignity. Geronimo!"

Amy yelled, and then there was a great grunt and a splash and Dawn blacked out.

* * *

Dawn woke to see the Doctor kneeling beside her, scanning her with his screwdriver. "Ugh, I had this _awful_ dream," she said to him. "Well, it didn't start out that way, but then we fell through this chute and landed in a giant mouth and -" She broke off as she looked down at herself and saw that she was drenched in the bile. "Oh."

The Doctor shot her a sympathetic look. "How do you feel?"

"Like I've been hit by a giant wave of sick, apparently."

"Well, there's nothing broken and you don't seem to have a concussion, you're fine."

Dawn looked around as the Doctor helped her stand up. "Where are we?"

"Overspill pipe, at a guess."

Dawn spotted Amy laying on the ground, still unconscious. "How is she?"

The Doctor moved to examine a door nearby. "Don't worry, she's fine too."

"Did you hear that?" Dawn asked the ginger as she began to stir. "You're fine."

Amy frowned as she finally opened her eyes and looked at her. "Are you . . .?"

"Covered in sick? Yeah, and so are you."

"Where are we?"

"The Doctor said it was an overspill pipe."

Amy got to her feet. "Oh, God, it stinks."

"That's not the pipe," the Doctor informed her.

"Oh." Amy smelled herself. "Whoo! Can we get out?"

"One door, one switch, one condition." The Doctor stepped aside so both girls could see the 'forget' button on the door. "We forget everything we saw. Look familiar? That's the carrot." Lights switched on, revealing two Smilers in booths at the other end of the pipe. "Ooh, here's the stick. There's a creature living in the heart of this ship. What's it doing there?"

The Smilers turned their heads as the trio walked towards them, revealing mad, frowning faces.

"No, that's not going to work on me," the Doctor said, "so come on. Big old beast below decks, and everyone who protests gets shoved down its throat. That how it works?"

The Smilers turned their heads again, their expressions becoming angrier.

"Oh, stop it. I'm not leaving and I'm not forgetting and what are you fellows going to do about it? Stick out your tongues?"

This time instead of changing their faces, the booths actually opened up and the Smilers stepped out, advancing on the trio, who backed away.

"Doctor?" Amy gasped.

They heard someone coming up behind them and turned to see Liz 10, without the mask and armed with a pistol. They got out of the way just as she fired at the Smilers and when the two figures collapsed, she twirled the pistol around her finger and put it back in its holster on her leg.

"Look who it is," the Doctor said. "You look a lot better without your mask."

"You must be Amy," Liz smiled as she approached them, holding out a hand to Amy. "Liz. Liz 10."

"Hi," Amy said.

Liz shook her hand, but released it quickly, wiping her hand on her cloak. "Eurgh! Lovely hair, Amy. Shame about the sick." She went over to the door as Mandy entered the pipe and put an arm around the girl. "You know Mandy, yeah? She's very brave."

"How did you find us?" the Doctor asked.

"Stuck my gizmo on you." Liz threw the Doctor the device she'd used to track him and Dawn. "Been listening in. Nice moves on the hurl escape. So, what's the big fella doing here?"

"You're over sixteen, you've voted. Whatever this is, you've chosen to forget about it."

"Liz," Dawn said, laughing as it struck her. "Liz 10! Of course! You've never voted."

"Never," Liz agreed, smiling. "Not technically a British subject."

"Then who and what are you, and how do you know us?" the Doctor asked, still a bit suspicious.

"You're a bit hard to miss, love. Mysterious strangers, MOs consistent with higher alien intelligence, one with the hair of an idiot . . ."

The Doctor opened his mouth as if to protest, but then ran his fingers through his soaked hair instead.

". . . the other the beautiful young woman who travels with him," Liz went on, looking at Dawn, whose eyes went wide as saucers.

"Alien?" she repeated, stunned. "But _I'm_ not -"

Liz's brows furrowed in confusion. "I've been brought up on the stories. My whole family was."

"Then the stories must have been wrong," Amy said, frowning as she looked between them all. "Dawn's human."

"No," the Doctor sighed. "She _looks_ human."

"I'm _sorry_?" Dawn asked, looking at him in shock. "You're not seriously trying to tell me what I think you are, are you?"

"I was going to take you and Amy on a few adventures to give you time to adjust and then I was going to sit you down and tell you . . ."

Liz looked at Dawn in astonishment. "You don't know," she breathed.

Dawn shook her head mutely. Just then, one of the Smilers began to move.

"They're repairing," Liz said, shaking her head and focusing back on their current situation. "Doesn't take them long. Let's move."

She rushed out of the room and Mandy and the Doctor, the latter pulling Dawn and Amy along by their wrists, followed her into the lower corridors of the ship.

"Your family?" the Doctor asked her.

"The Doctor and the Dawn," Liz explained. "Old drinking buddy of Henry XII. Tea and scones with Liz II. Vicky was a bit on the fence about you though, Doctor, weren't she? Knighted and exiled you on the same day. And so much for the Virgin Queen once Dawn introduced her to Jack, the bad, bad boy!"

"Jack?" Dawn repeated faintly.

"Later," the Doctor promised her. "Liz 10?"

"Liz 10, yeah," Liz said, nodding. "Elizabeth X. And down!" The others threw themselves on the ground as she turned and fired at three Smilers who had snuck up on them. "I'm the bloody Queen, mate. Basically, I rule." She led them into another corridor, past a vator shaft. "There's a high-speed Vator through there . . . Oh yeah," she added as the Doctor peered into a caged area where two tentacles, weakly swaying one moment then thrashing around the next. "There's these things. Any ideas?"

"Doctor, I saw one of these up top," Amy said. "There was a hole in the road, like it had burst through, like a root."

"Exactly like a root," the Doctor said. "It's all one creature - the same one we were inside - reaching out. It must be growing through the mechanisms of the entire ship."

"What?" Liz asked, frowning. "Like an infestation?"

"Somethings's helping it. Feeding it."

"Feeding my subjects to it," Liz spat angrily. "Come on. We've got to keep moving."

She stormed off, but while Mandy followed, Dawn, the Doctor, and Amy stayed put.

"Doctor?" Amy asked. "Dawn?"

The two were staring at the tentacles as they banged against the bars. Dawn, completely overwhelmed by what the Queen had told her and hearing the pained cries of the creature, felt as if she might start crying as she stared up at them.

"Oh, Amy," the Doctor sighed. "We should never have come here."

* * *

Liz had given Dawn, the Doctor, and Amy a chance to clean up and now they were all in her bedroom. The Doctor carefully walked through a maze of glasses on the floor until he reached Dawn, who was sitting on the edge of Liz's bed, and knelt before her, taking her hands in his own, waiting until she looked at him. "Hey."

"Hi," she ventured cautiously.

"How are you holding up?"

Dawn shrugged. "Could be better."

She was definitely very much confused, but other than that, she wasn't entirely sure how she was feeling. For her whole life, or at least for as long as she could remember, she'd thought she was human, but according to the Doctor and Liz, she never had been.

"I know you've had a bit of a shock, but I need you to keep it together until this adventure is over? Do you think you can do that for me?"

Dawn nodded hesitantly. It _had_ been a bit of a shock - well, more than a bit of a shock - learning that she wasn't human, and she wanted nothing more than to go back to the TARDIS and get some answers from the Doctor, but right now Liz needed all their help finding out what was going on around Starship UK and putting a stop to it. She thought she could "keep it together" until then.

"Good," the Doctor said, giving her hands a squeeze before releasing them and turning to Liz as he stood. "Why all the glasses?"

"To remind me every single day that my government is up to something," Liz replied as she reclined on her bed, taking a moment to rest, "and it's my duty to find out what."

The Doctor picked up the white mask laying on the bed next to Dawn. "A queen going undercover to investigate her own kingdom?"

"Secrets are being kept from me. I don't have a choice. Ten years I've been at this - my entire reign - and you've achieved more in one afternoon."

The Doctor began to pace. "How old were you when you came to the throne?"

"40. Why?"

Amy spun around from where she was putting up her hair. "What, you're 50 now? No way!"

"Yeah, they slowed my body clock. Keeps me looking like the stamps."

The Doctor sat down next to Dawn on the bed, still holding the mask. "And you always wear this in public?"

"Undercover's not easy when you're me. The autographs, the bunting."

Dawn took the mask from the Doctor and held it up to Liz's face, frowning. "Weird . . ." she murmured, half to herself, until she realized what she was doing and quickly lowered the mask as she pretended to be very interested in a random spot on the floor.

"What?" Liz asked, shooting her an odd look for the action.

"Air-balanced porcelain," the Doctor said, frowning as he glanced at Dawn. "Stays on by itself, cos it's perfectly sculpted to your face."

"Yeah. So what?"

"Oh, Liz. So everything."

Dawn, realizing what the Doctor was trying to say, opened her mouth to comment, then quickly stopped herself. Then the Doctor opened his mouth to comment on that, but before he had a chance to say anything, the door opened and four men in hooded black cloaks entered the room.

"What are you doing?!" Liz demanded, getting to her feet and marching over to them, outraged. "How dare you come in here?"

"Ma'am," said one of the men, "you have expressed interest in the interior workings of Starship UK. You will come with us now."

Liz narrowed her eyes in suspicion. "Why would I do that?"

In response, the man's head began to spin, revealing the face of an angry Smiler.

"How can they be smilers?" Liz gasped.

The Doctor shrugged. "Half Smiler, half human."

"Whatever you creatures are, I am still your queen. On whose authority is this done?"

"The highest authority, ma'am," the half-Smiler replied.

"I AM the highest authority."

"Yes, ma'am. You must go now, ma'am."

"Where?"

"The Tower, ma'am."

* * *

The Tower was a large stone room containing a few high-tech machines and control panels, some grating where they could all see more tentacles, and a well in the center, one without a grate over it, but with railings and a machine above it firing a laser periodically down at a pink lump resting inside.

"Doctor, where are we?" Amy asked, frowning as she looked around.

"The lowest point of Starship UK," he replied, a hint of anger behind his words as he held spun in a circle and held out his arms. "The dungeon."

"Ma'am," an old, gray-haired man with thick glasses walked over and nodded at Liz.

"Hawthorne!" she exclaimed. "So this is where you hid yourself away. I think you've got some explaining to do."

"Why are there children down here?" Dawn asked, seeing a handful of them walking around, carrying things in and out of the room.

"Yes, what's all that about?" the Doctor asked Hawthorne.

"Protestors and citizens of limited value are fed to the beast," the man explained sadly. "For some reason, it won't eat the children. You're the first adults it's spared. You're very lucky."

The Doctor scoffed at that. "Yeah, look at us. Torture chamber of the Tower of London. Lucky, lucky, lucky. Except it's not a torture chamber, is it?" He glanced at a control panel. "Well, except it is. Except it isn't. Depends on your angle."

Liz was standing by the well, looking down at the lump. "What's that?"

"Well, like I say," the Doctor said as he joined her, "depends on the angle. It's either the exposed pain center of big fella's brain, being tortured relentlessly . . ."

"Or?" Liz looked up.

"Or it's the gas pedal, the accelerator - Starship UK's go-faster button."

"I don't understand."

"Don't you?" Dawn asked. Because she did. The screaming she'd been hearing since they arrived was beginning to make perfect sense to her now.

"Try, go on," the Doctor urged. "The spaceship that could never fly, no vibration on deck. This creature - this poor, trapped, terrified creature. It's not infesting you, it's not invading -"

"It's your engine," Dawn nearly spat, utterly disgusted by whoever had done this to the creature.

The Doctor nodded. "And this place down here is where you hurt it, where you torture it, day after day, just to keep it moving. Tell you what." He moved over to another well, pulling off the grate and whipping out his screwdriver. "Normally, it's above the range of human hearing . . ." One of the tentacles shot up from the grate. "This is the sound none of you wanted to hear!"

The sound of the creature's pained cries was amplified as the Doctor switched on the screwdriver. Dawn squirmed a bit anxiously, wanting badly for it to stop, but she couldn't help but feel that these people deserved to hear what they'd done.

"Stop it," Liz pleaded. She rounded on Hawthorne. "Who did this?"

"We act on instructions from the highest authority," he recited.

"I _am_ the highest authority. This creature will be released, now. I said now!" But no one lifted a finger to follow her command. "Is anyone listening to me?"

"I don't think they have in a very long time," Dawn said, looking at the mask she'd brought with her.

"What do you mean?"

"Your mask . . ."

"What about my mask?"

The Doctor took the mask from Dawn and tossed it to Liz. "Look at it," he said. "It's old. At least 200 years old, I'd say."

"Yeah, it's an antique, so?"

"It's _perfectly sculpted to your face_," Dawn stressed. "YOUR face."

Any other time, she would have pretended she hadn't picked up on that fact, but it was important and Liz needed to understand.

But Liz just shook her head, not comprehending.

"They slowed your body clock, alright," the Doctor said, "but you're not 50. Nearer 300. And it's been a long old reign."

"Nah, it's ten years," Liz said. "I've been on this throne ten years."

"Ten years," the Doctor agreed. "And the same ten years over and over again." He took her by the hand, pulling her with him over to a voting booth. "Always leading you here."

Liz looked down at the 'forget' and 'abdicate' buttons before she looked at Hawthorne, horrified. "What have you done?"

"Only what you have ordered," he replied in a solemn, weary tone that suggested he'd had this conversation before. "We work for you, ma'am. The Winders, the Smilers, all of us."

The man reached over and turned on the screens, which played a recording of Liz, who sank into a chair as the message began to play:

"If you are watching this . . . If _I_ am watching this, then I have found my way to the Tower of London. The creature you are looking at is called a Star Whale. Once, there were millions of them. They lived in the depths of space and, according to legend, guided the early space travelers through the asteroid belts. This one, as far as we are aware, is the last of its kind. And what we have done to it breaks my heart. The Earth was burning. Our sun had turned on us, and every other nation had fled to the skies. Our children screamed as the skies grew hotter. And then it came, like a miracle. The last of the star whales. We trapped it, we built our ship around it, and we rode on its back to safety. If you wish our voyage to continue, then you must press the 'forget' button. Be again the heart of this nation, untainted. If not, press the other button. Your reign will end, the Star Whale will be released, and our ship will disintegrate. I hope I keep the strength to make the right decision."

"I voted for this?" Amy breathed, stunned. She looked at the Doctor. "Why would I do that?"

"Because you knew if we stayed here," he said, "I'd be faced with an impossible choice. Humanity or the alien. You took it upon yourself to save me from that. And that was wrong. You don't ever decide what I need to know."

"I don't even remember doing it."

"You did it," the Doctor muttered harshly. "That's what counts."

"I'm . . . I'm sorry."

"Oh, I don't care. When I'm done here, you're going home."

"Why?" Amy demanded as she followed him over to a control panel across the room. "Because I made a mistake? One mistake? I don't even remember doing it. Doctor!"

"Yeah. I know. You're only human."

"What are you doing?" Liz asked cautiously as she watched the Doctor, sensing his rage.

"The worst thing I'll ever do. I'm going to pass a massive electrical charge through the Star Whale's brain. Should knock out all its higher functions, leave it a vegetable. The ship will still fly, but the whale won't feel it."

Amy frowned. "That'd be like killing it."

"What else can he do?" Dawn asked. "Let it suffer?"

"But there has to be something."

"Look, three options," the Doctor said, rubbing his head. "One . . . I let the Star Whale continue in unendurable agony for hundreds more years. Two . . . I kill everyone on this ship. Three . . . I murder a beautiful, innocent creature as painlessly as I can . . . And then I find a new name, cos I won't be the Doctor anymore."

"There must be something we can do," Liz tried to insist, agreeing with Amy, "some other way."

"Nobody talk to me," the Doctor muttered, then suddenly he shouted, "Nobody _human_ has anything to say to me today!"

* * *

"Doctor, stop!" Dawn, standing with the Doctor, watching helplessly as he worked, turned at the sound of Amy's voice. "Dawn, whatever he's doing, stop him!" Amy ran over to Liz and dragged her over to the voting booth. "Sorry, Your Majesty, going to need a hand."

"Amy, no!" the Doctor shouted, rushing over to her. "No!"

But he was too late - he reached them just as Amy forced Liz's hand down on the 'abdicate' button. There was a great bellow from the Star Whale and the whole ship shook and jolted, causing sparks to fly from the controls around them, but only for a moment before the ship stilled.

"Amy, what have you done?" Dawn asked.

"Nothing at all," Amy said, smiling as she looked at Hawthorne. "Am I right?"

"We've INCREASED speed," the man reported, flabbergasted.

"Yeah, well, you've stopped torturing the pilot. Gotta help."

Liz could only shake her head, stunned. "It's still here? I don't understand."

"The Star Whale didn't come like a miracle all those years ago," Amy explained. "It volunteered. You didn't have to trap it or torture it - that was all just you. It came because it couldn't stand to watch your children cry. What if you were really old, and really kind and alone?" She glanced at the Doctor. "Your whole race dead, no future. What couldn't you do then? If you were that old, and that kind . . ." She turned fully to the Doctor, smiling at him. "You couldn't just stand there and watch children cry."

* * *

Dawn and the Doctor were standing on an observation deck, looking out over the starship, while Amy was with Liz being honored for her actions earlier. They were silent a moment, lost in their thoughts, as they waited for her, before Dawn turned to the Doctor. There was one thing that had been bothering her that she NEEDED to know before they sat down and talked.

"How could I not have known?" she asked him. "I mean, all these years I thought I was human . . . I've had blood tests done and everything - surely _someone_ must have noticed? A doctor or . . . or something?"

The Doctor smiled at that. "Yes, they probably would have . . . _if_ you hadn't tampered with your own results."

"I tampered with my own . . ." Dawn shook her head. "So, wait, you know me?"

"I've met a future version of you."

"And travelled with her?"

The Doctor only nodded in response and Dawn mulled that over for a moment before something else occurred to her.

"Is that why I have two hearts?"

"Sorry?"

"I thought it was a birth defect, having two hearts, but it's because I'm not human, isn't it?"

"It's because you're a Time Lord - well, Time _Lady_. We're a two-hearted species."

"Any other organs that I have two of?"

The Doctor just chuckled. "I promise I'll tell you everything you need to know when we get back to the TARDIS."

Dawn opened her mouth to ask another question when Amy came up to them, half-skipping and smiling widely. "From Her Majesty," she said, handing the Doctor Liz's mask. "She says there will be no more secrets on Starship UK."

"Amy, you could have killed everyone on this ship," the Doctor told her.

"You could have killed a Star Whale," she countered.

"And you saved it. I know, I know."

"Amazing, though, don't you think? The Star Whale. All that pain and misery . . . and loneliness." Here, Amy cast a sideways look at the Doctor. "And it just made it kind."

"But you couldn't have known how it would react," Dawn cut in.

"But we've seen it before. Very old and very kind, and the very, very last - the Doctor might not be the _very_ last - and I have questions about that, by the way, lots of them - but still . . . Sound a bit familiar?"

Amy drew Dawn and the Doctor into a hug.

"Hey," she whispered to the Doctor.

"What?"

"Gotcha."

"Ha! Gotcha."

* * *

The small trio walked back through the marketplace, heading for the TARDIS, all of them smiling because everyone had lived. "Shouldn't we say goodbye?" Amy asked. "Won't they wonder where we went?"

"For the rest of their lives," the Doctor said, grinning. "Oh, the songs they'll write! Never mind them. Big day tomorrow."

"Sorry, what?" Amy stopped short, and Dawn looked at her, wondering why she was so jumpy all of a sudden.

"It's always a big day tomorrow. We've got a time machine. I skip the little ones."

And with that, the Doctor unlocked the TARDIS with a little key.

"You know what I said about getting back for tomorrow morning," Amy began. "Have you ever run away from something because you were scared, or not ready, or just . . . just because you could?"

The Doctor nodded. "Once . . . a long time ago."

"What happened?"

"Hello!"

A phone began to ring inside the TARDIS.

"Right," Amy went on. "Dawn, Doctor, there's something I haven't told either of you. No. Hang on, is that a phone ringing?"

"People phone you?" Dawn asked as they all entered the TARDIS.

"People phone _us_," the Doctor corrected, moving over to the console to begin piloting them away from the starship. "Would one of you mind?"

Amy reached the phone before Dawn did. "Hello? Sorry, who? No, seriously. Who?" She put the phone to her shoulder. "Says he's Prime Minister. First the Queen, now the Prime Minister. Get about, don't you?"

The Doctor motioned for Dawn to pull a lever. "Which Prime Minister?"

Amy put the phone back to her ear. "Er, which Prime Minister?" She looked back at the Doctor. "The British one."

"Which British one?"

"Which British one?" Amy's eyes went wide as saucers and she handed the phone to the Doctor, stunned. "Winston Churchill for you."

"Oh!" The Doctor took the phone. "Hello, dear. What's up?" There was a pause. "Don't worry about a thing, Prime Minister. We're on our way." He set the phone down and looked at Dawn. "But first . . ."

* * *

A/N: So, yeah, Dawn's a Time Lady. Why she thought she was human all this time will be explained eventually and we'll have a bit more about her thoughts on everything she's learned in this chapter in the next, and maybe a bit about what Amy thinks about it all. We didn't get much from Dawn in this one because she was in shock and of course there was a pretty big distraction with the Star Whale. Anyway, let me know what you think.

EDIT (4-23-14): There's something I put in the next chapter about Dawn and will be mentioned throughout the story that I realized I didn't even hint about in these first couple chapters, so I added a few lines in this one. Next chapter will be up within the next few days.


End file.
